Mickey Rourke has taken some grief in the
past for his performances in roles that just seemed wrong
for him, but I think he's terrific when he gets the right
part, and he sure got it here. In 1955, Harry Angel, a
lower-class stumblebum detective from Brooklyn, who is no
NASA candidate, is hired by a stranger to find a singer
missing since the war. The singer is believed to have
breached a contract with the mysterious stranger.

Along the way to this ostensibly
simple assignment, Rourke finds a trail of grisly
murders, confusing clues, beatings, black magic, and
plenty of atmosphere in New Orleans, Harlem, and Coney Island. As
time goes on, both he and we discover that he is
searching for something else besides a singer - something
sinister and somehow related to the detective himself.

It's a
combination horror movie and detective film noir, and
it's terrific, although the plot is incredibly
complicated and confusing. What was the significance of
the nuns? Why do those black guys keep chasing him in
Harlem? As the genre requires, Angel gets beat up about
every ten minutes, and neither he nor we are exactly sure
why in some cases.

What
we do know is that Mr. Johnny Favorite, the missing
singer, was one serious sleazebag who engaged in some blasphemously
evil practices.

At one time I tried to
figure out some of these unexplained details, so I read
the prize-winning book upon which the film is based, then
lent it to a friend to read. Between the two of us, we
had no more clue after reading and discussing the book
than before we started it. I think you have to just
accept that it is some dark evil stuff, and forget about
trying to tie it down too tight. I can't say much more
because the mystery is much more fun if you try to solve
it along with Harry Angel.

NUDITY REPORT

Charlotte
Rampling is seen topless when she is dead.

Lisa
Bonet is first seen in a see-through blouse,
then dancing in an open shirt which does little
to keep her breasts covered, then in a sex scene
with Rourke.

Elizabeth
Whitcraft is seen topless in a sex scene with
Rourke.

There
is virtually no lower body nudity, except for
Rourke's buns when he is on top in the sex scene.

Director
Alan Parker really did an exceptional job on the
atmospheric touches that keep the mystery mysterious and
the horror horrible. The rusty mechanisms in Angel's
recurring half-memories, the decaying hospital, the seedy
offices and apartments, the shanties of Algiers,
Louisiana, the various haunts and artifacts of black
magic, the heart-beat background score - all combine to
give us a creepy, spooky, feeling of incomprehension,
matching what is going through the head of the simple
detective.

The
name of the book is Falling Angel, and it was
written in 1978, nearly a decade before the movie
was released. It is available as an inexpensive
paperback.

There is a
crazy scene on Coney Island between Rourke and a
carnival geek who has an entire box of nose shields. This
one of the oddest and most memorable conversations ever recorded on film.

In addition to the
atmospheric direction, there is some interesting casting
to support Rourke.

Former Cosby kid Lisa Bonet took the most
un-Cosby role she could find, showing her breasts
constantly as Rourke's lover and daughter. Their sex
scene was hot enough that it had to be trimmed for the R
rating. Bonet showed more than flesh. She also demonstrated some talent. She was quite natural
and sexy as hell, but her career fizzled into
nothingness. (Rumor is that she was not an easy person to
work with, to state it mildly.)

Robert DeNiro holds down
the other lead, as the mysterious client, speaking with a
refinement not usually found in his range, and all the
while doing a very odd impersonation of his good friend
Marty Scorsese.

I love this movie, so I
don't want to get all anal-retentive on its ass, but you'll notice that
the street scene below has some sloppy and obvious anachronisms. In the
two circles you will see (a) a vehicle that did not exist in the mid
50s, and (b) traffic signals that did not exist then.

If I gave star ratings,
this would be a near-miss for four stars, finishing at
3.5 (the same rating Roger Ebert gave it). I like the movie
enough to give it four and recommend it heartily, but I
have to remind myself that it is a genre film without
universal appeal, and it has some flaws related to
confusion, detail-orientation, and continuity. But I love it nonetheless.

Tuna's thoughts in yellow:

Angel Heart (1987) is a better than
average horror/mystery/thriller. Mickey Rourke is believable as an
unwashed and mostly unemployed private eye in New York, who suddenly is
contacted by a rich but very strange client (Robert De Niro), and asked
to find a missing person. De Niro claims his only interest is to find
out if the man is alive or dead. The missing man was a well known
crooner before WW II, but was horribly disfigured during the war, and
hospitalized with amnesia. The client had regular reports from a
hospital that he was there, condition unchanged, but the last report
didn't arrive. Rourke checks with the hospital, and finds that the
missing man has actually been gone for twelve years, but a doctor was
paid a large sum of money to make people think he was still at the
hospital.

With a little help from his reporter girlfriend, Elizabeth Whitcraft,
the detective eventually figures out that New Orleans is the place to
look. As he gets closer to the truth, a hefty body count is building,
including an ex-girlfriend of the missing man, a psychic played by
Charlotte Rampling. The more he learns, the more frightened and uneasy
Rourke becomes. One of the more pleasant parts of his investigation is
Lisa Bonet, who is the daughter of one of the women he wanted to track
down. As I strongly recommend this to those who haven't seen it, I will
leave the plot there.

Whitcraft shows breasts in a pre sex scene with Rourke, Rampling shows
one breast after having had her heart cut out, and Bonet shows her
breasts in several scenes, including a see through while washing her
hair, a bathtub scene, a voodoo chicken execution dance, and a lengthy
sex scene with Rourke that really sizzles. It is an unusual film that is strong with the critics, and also with general viewing audiences.
This film is a B-.

With their
votes ... IMDB summary: IMDb voters
score it a near-classic at 7.0

With their
dollars ... it did okay - $17 million
domestic gross

The meaning of the IMDb
score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of
excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars
from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm
watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars
from the critics. The fives are generally not
worthwhile unless they are really your kind of
material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics.
Films rated below five are generally awful even if you
like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one
and a half stars from the critics or even less,
depending on just how far below five the rating
is.

My own
guideline: A means the movie is so good it
will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not
good enough to win you over if you hate the
genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an
open mind about this type of film. C means it will only
appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover
appeal. (C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but
will be considered excellent by genre fans, while
C- indicates that it we found it to
be a poor movie although genre addicts find it watchable). D means you'll hate it even if you
like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if
you love the genre. F means that the film is not only
unappealing across-the-board, but technically
inept as well.

Based on this description,
Tuna says B-. Scoop says "C+
by our system. It's
one of my favorite films, a genre masterpiece, but the graphic sex and violence
probably keeps
it from being a crossover possibility. If I rate it based solely
on how much I like it, then B+. One of my all-time Top 100. I
wish I had never seen it, so I could watch it again without
knowing the solution."